About Al-Rabi ibn al-Rabi' l-Huqayq al-Nadir

The Qur'an says the Jews of Yathrib thought that Ezra was the "son of God". Rabbi Ben Abrahamson, Director of ISraeli Rabbinate's "Committee for Historical Research in Islam and Judaism" argues, and I agree with him, that "Ezra" was another name for Nehemiah ben Hushiel.

Al Jahiz refers to a Jewish group termed Saduqiyya (Sadducees) which are found in the Yemen, Syria, and Byzantine territory. He says their name stems from "a man whose name was Zadok (the student of Antigonus of Sokho), and that they held that 'Uzayr [Ezra] was the son of God [as prophesied by Daniel].

Ibn Hazm records Al Saduqiyyh: This sect associates itself with a person called Saduq (Zadok). Differing with all other Jews, they regard Uzayr (Ezra) as the son of God. They live in Yemen. (Ibn Hazm's Kitab al-Fasl fi al-Milal wa al-Ahwa wa al-Nihal)

Many people think that all Jews were expelled from Palestine by the Romans in the aftermath of the 132-135 Bar-Kokhba Revolt. This is not true.

Many Palestinian Jews remained in Palestine, some of them converting to Christianity as this religion spread through the Roman empire, but some of them remaining Jewish. In 614, Palestine was part of the Byzantine Empire (as the eastern part of the Roman empire came to be known) and was home to communities of both Christians and Jews. There was, however, some inter-communal tension. After the surrender of Jerusalem to Persians on 20 May, 614, several tens of thousands of Palestinian Christians were massacred by local Palestinian Jews; many of their bodies were buried in a cave at Mamilla, just outside the city walls.

Jerusalem was recaptured by the Byzantines shortly afterwards but was lost again, this time to Muslim Arabs, in 638. The memory of the massacre in 614 is echoed in the 638 treaty of surrender between the Jerusalemites and Caliph Omar ibn Khattab. In the Sulh al Quds, as this treaty is called, Patriarch Sofronius demanded, and the powerful Arab ruler agreed, that the Christians of Jerusalem would not be massacred.

While neither Christianity nor Judaism disappeared from Palestine under Muslim rule, over time, most Palestinian Jews and Christians converted to Islam -- the Arabic-speaking Palestinian Muslims of today are mostly descended from Byzantine Christian and Jewish Palestinians.